Tweets from #TLC Twitterverse

Ever since I attended AlwaysOn OnMedia NYC conference in January 2007, where I witnessed the unfolding of a parallel conference on large side-mounted LCD panels, I’ve been intrigued by the power of social media to enhance the traditional conference experience. That conference pioneered a new delivery approach, which attempts to exploit peer-to-peer discussions and even involve those outside the conference in the event itself. I’m convinced that, in the context of conferences at least, much of the power of the social media lies in creating a whole new back channel of discussion. In that way, conference attendees can network, take notes and make the conference as personal to their needs as they desire.

The same thing was happening at the recent CommunitechTech Leadership Conference (TLC) in Waterloo on May 1st. In fact, when I made the suggestion to Iain Klugman (Communitech President) to consider installing those monitors for the next event, he was most enthusiastic. Nonetheless, while reflecting on the important, high level lessons from this conference, (which I plan to cover in a later blog posting), I did a quick mash-up of the main Twitter posts from TLC. I dug around and herein include a representative sampling, with apologies to anyone missed or anyone not wanting to be so immortalized, which paints an interesting picture of this back channel, including:

most Twitters were from attendees, but surprisingly people outside the conference, both local and some as far away as the UK, got into the conversation.

some speakers (e.g. sacca and markevans) were in also involved in the dialogue – is the back-channel “on message” with carefully prepared presentations?

on that point, follow the link in markevans Twitter for some commentary on perceived “tension” between the “old school” and new style of funding models

sometimes the comments reinforced the points, sometimes they challenged them. Is it true that perhaps, in contrast to the famous Mark Zuckerberg/Sarah Lacy SXSW encounter, people in Waterloo are too polite to mock the speakers?

my Twieets were an attempt to use Twitter for digital note taking. By capturing some key thoughts and ideas, a later Tweetscan could retrieve them easily

and, lastly, is Waterloo as Web 2.0 and social media savvy as we like to think? With around 6 Twitters out of 500 attendees, it’s a question worth asking.

I would suggest that the social media “web” as seen in Twitter, may well be as transformational to the conference as the advent of the web (Web 1.0) was to print media. And, of course, Twitter is really just Social 1.0.

So, enjoy this reverse-chronological peek into the back-channel dialogue from TLC on May 1st.